Hello, My Name Is

Six questions that helped me pick a new name

I originally wrote this essay for a zine, and decided to expand and share some of it here. If you’d like a copy of the zine, you can find it in my online shop.

I thought about changing my name a lot before I ever mentioned it to anyone else. It was the kind of thing I would think about periodically, find the idea impenetrable, and then not think of again until something brought it back into my field of vision. The thing I concluded again and again is that I wasn’t unhappy or dysphoric enough to justify the change—and I guess in a way that was true. Unhappiness is not the price of admission to change, but it can have a “what have I got to lose?” motivational quality that gets you from one place to another.¹

But at a certain point I had changed all kinds of other things in my life that I previously hadn’t considered bad enough to change, and I felt better and more content and so willing to say, “why not my name too?” Which is a really nice and peaceful thought in theory. Like the heavens opening and saying, “wanting to change is reason enough.” In practice, I immediately panicked about how difficult it would be to move away from the name I’d had for three decades.

Legally changing it seemed scary and overwhelming, and getting friends and coworkers to call me something different seemed impossible. I kept thinking about how much worse it would feel to have people call me the wrong name, rather than just going by a name that wasn’t quite what I wanted but which no one knew any differently about (and therefore it couldn’t be some kind of rejection).

That anxiety stripped out any of the sense of fun or possibility. Any thoughts about names I might like turned quickly to thoughts about everything else that scared me. How could I possibly know what I wanted or might like, when all I could think about was all the consequences I didn’t want?

Luckily, I have very good friends who—when I finally told them—helped me. Thinking about what I wanted felt hard in the abstract, but having people ask me questions was approachable. Having something concrete to respond to in a safe container, rather than circling around in my own head, opened up the world of possibility.

Here are the questions they asked me:²

• Do you want your name to mean something?

• How do you feel about names that are real things? (e.g. River)

• Do you want it to be long, or short?

• Do you have a favorite letter, or letters you don’t like?

• Any favorite/least favorite sounds?

• Do you want it to be gendered in a particular way, or more neutral?

The questions seem obvious now—methodical, broad while also specific, not leading—but I don’t think I could have come up with them on my own; my feelings were too big.

Once I had a foundation in my own desires, choosing was easy. The second I saw ‘Evan’ on a list, I knew it was what I was looking for.

I don’t know if these questions will give other people that same experience of ease, but I hope they do. I hope anyone who wants to change their name finds one that feels like home, without agonizing or spiraling. But/and it’s okay, and doesn’t have to mean anything, if it still feels hard or takes years or whatever the case may be. Like anything else, it takes the time it takes.

Yours in solidarity & naming,

Evan

1. I had a similar experience with pronouns-thinking about it and always feeling like I hadn’t hit whatever the threshold was for it to be justified. But actually wanting to, even a little bit, is enough of a reason to change (or at least to experiment and see). Satisfaction doesn’t have to be bought or earned with pain.

2. I include my answers in the zine; it didn’t feel like quite the right fit to share them here.